We are a commune of inquiring, skeptical, politically centrist, capitalist, anglophile, traditionalist New England Yankee humans, humanoids, and animals with many interests beyond and above politics. Each of us has had a high-school education (or GED), but all had ADD so didn't pay attention very well, especially the dogs. Each one of us does "try my best to be just like I am," and none of us enjoys working for others, including for Maggie, from whom we receive neither a nickel nor a dime. Freedom from nags, cranks, government, do-gooders, control-freaks and idiots is all that we ask for.

Follow the money and the power. Race baiting for fun and profit is the driving force of the Democrat party. Look how easy it was to extract/extort concessions from Starbucks. It is politically powerful and very difficult to thwart.

If I remember my de Tocqueville from school correctly, he had a bit about how removing the mountain of slavery would tend to accentuate the foothills of racism, of bigotry and prejudice, making the question of ending slavery more complicated than one might think. I know of a lady who claimed - completely seriously - that race relations under Bush were worse than they had ever been in the history of the country. Suggesting that perhaps race relations were a wee bit worse 75 years ago or 175 years ago just raised the response that blacks have so many more problems now than then. It's like a man with a splinter and a paper cut and a hangnail and an itchy mosquito bite and a grizzly bear trying to tear his face off. He's only going to notice one of those problems, get rid of the grizzly bear and suddenly his problems have multiplied.

Good points, Jerry. The fundamental problem is how to deal with the increasing economic returns to IQ when it's becoming widely known how closely IQ is related to genetics, and when an readily identifiable minority has a real history of oppression and is unfortunately in the shallow end of the IQ pool. In one sense the lady is correct. Race relations are worse now since we continue to push ineffective and in some cases counterproductive policies that used to work when the disparity in returns to IQ were lower.

Progressives can't admit progress has been made because they don't really believe in what they are selling.

They don't care about progress in racial relations. Their actual goal is leftist revolution. To bring that about, they need a crisis - and what good is a crisis that actually gets resolved?

So progressives cite to a permanent crisis of race - no matter what. Or unemployment. Or education. Or gun crime. Or global warming. Or anything else that they can pass off as an emergency requiring radical change. Actual progress that removes the urgency of a crisis would be counterproductive to their long term goals.

Oddly enough the solution they think we need inevitably requires heavy handed central government planning, higher taxes and more government power. Weird how that works

'Progress' in the Progressives eyes has nothing to do with real progress, at least not in a forward direction.

Too often it appears that they want to go back to the "Bad Old Days' of the Soviet Union, ignoring just how bad it was there and the millions killed all in the name of Progressivism/Socialism/Communism (which are all part of the Great Big Tree of Socialism). Rather than 'Back to the Future' it's more like 'Forward...to the Past!"

1. If their opponents aren't racist, they have nothing. Imagine yourself as a PR firm hired to help the Democrats and you will see what I mean. Jobs and the economy? Safety from foreign enemies? Crime? International trade? Discrimination against women? I suppose you could try to flog the climate change horse again, but mostly, you have to tell you base that they are going to be slaves again, or that evil conservatives will make you go to church and have lots of babies.

2. It feels great to be more moral than other people, and if the cost is low, so much the better! You don't have to actually give your own money to causes, like conservatives do, you can give away other people's money instead.

3. And you get to tell other people what to do. I disagree with Jablonski that it's about revolution per se. That applies to far less than half of 'em. It's about being in charge, having power, and humiliating others.

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